New saying "we're facilitating dialogue"

Our sales manager Christal and I had the opportunity to attend a SNA (Suburban Newspapers of America) Symposium last week and of course my mind was reeling with all the great ideas. But one of the things that I heard that stuck was....we are in the business of facilitating dialogue.

What does that mean?

I think it can mean something different to our editors and our readers; our clients and consumers, sports teams and their fans...you get the idea.

Our advertisers want their message to reach consumers; our teachers want to talk to their students' parents, charities want their message to be heard by people who care.

Our products facilitate dialogue between different communities. Dublin parents and the administration at Dublin Coffman High; the People In Need charity organization and city volunteers; Central Ohio shoppers trying to save money and women that have the know how to help....


Ask yourself and your advertisers, what dialogue should you be participating in?

We are the in the business of targeted messaging aka niche marketing
I think that we need to reevaluate how we think. We often have been taught to spit off numbers in bulk. For example we reach 800,000 households and 90% of the population (this is an example of course).

If you ask our advertisers, would you rather reach 20,000 people that may look at your message or 500 who really want it, what do you think they will say? It probably depends on if they want an awareness campaign or a campaign that will more immediately bring results.

In Real Estate for example, we've all heard the expression it only takes 2 people to buy and sell a home...so don't you want to hit the people that are really looking to take that step and put your message in front of them, do we really spend time researching how we can help our clients do this?

Social Networking is one way that you can reach niche audiences

Search Marketing,
Targeted Banner Advertising
Email marketing to sub groups

These are all ways that we can hit the masses...OR we can target communities of people looking for a particular service or product.

While our community newspapers and websites in general have the ability to blanket some markets and provide a TOMA (top of mind awareness campaign), I don't think we stress enough just how targeted our messaging can be to the "sub" communities all throughout our city...What do you think?